Dems: Snyder admin helped cousin

Michigan Democrats charge that officials in Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration moved to protect the business interests of the governor’s cousin from a round of steep budget cuts shortly after Snyder took office in 2011.

A batch of new documents and emails obtained by the state Democratic Party and shared with POLITICO suggest that George Snyder — the owner of furniture company DBI Business Interiors — lobbied a top administration official to protect a multimillion-dollar furniture contract with the state on behalf of Haworth Inc., a Michigan-based office furniture company with a history of supporting GOP candidates and causes. Democrats say not only were the cuts ultimately nixed, but the furniture contract was increased that year.

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Snyder’s gubernatorial office has flatly denied these claims, calling it a “manufactured story and issue.”

The allegations come as Snyder’s reelection campaign heats up. Democrats see the state as one of their top 2014 targets, along with Pennsylvania, Florida and Maine.

In an April 2011 email, documents show, George Snyder contacted Richard Baird, a top Snyder adviser, saying that he was “very upset and nervous about the language in the Senate budget bill on furniture.”

Baird forwarded the email to John Nixon, then Michigan’s state budget director, who responded, “we are on it.”

In a subsequent email between Baird and Nixon, Baird identifies that George Snyder is the Republican governor’s cousin, forwarding along a second request for information about the state’s “furniture process.”

In his successful 2010 campaign, Snyder had promised sweeping changes to state government. Snyder’s 2011 budget proposal did just that, including huge spending cuts and lower taxes for businesses. Snyder’s budget proposed $1.2 billion in permanent spending cuts to schools, local governments and other areas to help deal with the state’s $1.4 billion budget deficit.

He also called for significant restructuring of Michigan’s tax system, including replacing the state’s business tax with a 6 percent corporate income tax, which would lead to $1.8 billion in tax cuts for businesses.

While Snyder campaigned for governor as “One Tough Nerd” with the promise of transforming the state’s government, Democrats at the time criticized his budget proposal as favoring businesses and corporations while harming working families and seniors.

The release of the emails is likely to revive that argument. Democrats charge that Snyder’s goal wasn’t shared sacrifice, but instead politics as usual where Snyder picked and chose favorites, allowing his family and associates to benefit.

“While parents and seniors were being told by the governor they must sacrifice to balance the state’s billion-dollar deficit budget, Rick Snyder’s family and political friends were being taken care of,” Lon Johnson, the Michigan Democratic Party chair, said in a statement to accompany the release of the emails. “This scandal reveals hypocrisy reaching directly into the governor’s office and is a serious and disturbing breach of public trust.”

Michigan Democrats were expected to unveil the emails formally at a press conference Tuesday in Southfield, a suburb of Detroit.

A spokeswoman for Snyder’s campaign referred questions to the governor’s office. A spokeswoman for Snyder’s gubernatorial office said that the emails were “taken out of context.”

“George Snyder and DBI have had well-established and competitively bid business contracts with the state, long before Gov. Snyder was ever elected into office,” spokeswoman Sara Wurfel said. “That track record and history can and does speak for itself.”

An official from Michigan’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget, the office that deals with state procurement and budget issues, said the “accusation that there was some sort of preferential treatment given because the governor’s cousin works there is absolutely false.”

Democrats are seeking to tie the administration’s emails to the NERD Fund, the now-dissolved, Snyder-backed nonprofit advocacy group that critics have charged is cloaked in secrecy.

As the NERD Fund could accept unlimited campaign donations and its donors didn’t have to be disclosed, Democrats — including challenger Mark Schauer — have argued that it’s impossible to know whether special interests could be influencing state policy.

The NERD Fund reportedly paid for the housing of Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr and for a time paid the salary of Baird, a top Snyder aide until he joined the government payroll.

Snyder announced that he would shutter the fund late last year, arguing that though the nonprofit had complied with all laws, it had become a distraction.

The Michigan Democratic Party said that Snyder’s use of the NERD Fund to “protect lucrative state contracts of family members and political allies from budget cuts certainly gives new meaning to the phrase putting friends and family first.”

Snyder formally announced his plans to run for reelection last month, touting his plans to reinvent Michigan, which he called the “comeback state” during his official campaign launch.

A February EPIC-MRA poll showed Snyder with an 8-point lead over Schauer.